언어를 통한 정체성 회복: 마마데이의 새벽으로 지은 집

Abstract

Momaday’s House Made of Dawn, published in 1968, is the first novel by a native American writer to win a Pulitzer Prize. The book is about Abel, an Indian veteran coming home from World War II, and his struggle between the traditional Indian world of his ancestors’ ancient culture and the modern white world of violence and prejudice. Abel is sick both physically and psychologically. In his painful struggle, he goes through a healing process, which is eventually brought to completion through traditional stories and storytelling. To Momaday, words are a powerful creation. These words carry on the ancient tradition and bring the listener into union with the oral tradition. Momaday has keen insight into the oral tradition—language, imagination, and stories—and its relationship to a man’s “possession of himself.” This point is made clear by Momaday’s portraying of Abel as a man with a language problem: a man who is “inarticulate.” Healing through traditional stories and storytelling is a consistent theme in Momaday’s House Made of Dawn. At the end of this novel, Abel is healed of the sickness caused by his alienation, and he joins his people and tells his own stories. Momaday’s Abel begins to sing a traditional song. In the novel, the word is action full of energy. And the creative power of the word plays an important function in the healing of Abel. Benally’s traditional oral chants—“House Mand of Dawn,” “Beautway,” and “Night Chant”—restore Able from top to bottom. The restoration makes it possible for Abel to reach wholeness and come to his native land. During this process, the fragments of his life come together into an organic whole. The controlling force of this organic unification and of Abel’s healing is his learning to relate to Native American traditional stories.